Fine Arts Commons^™

Ex Post Modernism: How The First Amendment Framed Nonrepresentational Art, Sonya G. Bonneau

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Nonrepresentational art repeatedly surfaces in legal discourse as an example of highly valued First Amendment speech. It is also systematically described in constitutionally valueless terms: nonlinguistic, noncognitive, and apolitical. Why does law talk about nonrepresentational art at all, much less treat it as a constitutional precept? What are the implications for conceptualizing artistic expression as free speech?

This article contends that the source of nonrepresentational art’s presumptive First Amendment value is the same source of its utter lack thereof: modernism. Specifically, a symbolic alliance between abstraction and freedom of expression was forged in the mid-twentieth century, informed by social and …

Boom, Jessica Sanchez

Digressions: Literary & Art Journal

No abstract provided.

Ice Cream City, Ursalina Aguiler

Digressions: Literary & Art Journal

No abstract provided.

When I Saw I Cried, Ursalina Aguiler

Digressions: Literary & Art Journal

No abstract provided.

A Mickey's Nightmare, Ursalina Aguiler

Digressions: Literary & Art Journal

No abstract provided.

Surprised, Zara Khan

Digressions: Literary & Art Journal

No abstract provided.

My Thinking Place, Claudia Murcia

Digressions: Literary & Art Journal

No abstract provided.

Polygonal Provocateur, Abigail Daleki

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This thesis calls attention to what we interpret as a painting; an object hung on a wall for decoration, to be looked at, thought about, or just as an interruption to a dull, white surface. Historically, paintings were used in religious practice or to serve utilitarian purpose. Through the years, paintings have become less about content and more about catching the eye, making the viewer think. Paint, on a canvas, stretched over a frame and hung on a wall is, traditionally, a painting. I am focused on challenging that regime. I want to challenge the idea of what a painting …

Unapologetic Self, Aashish Maskey

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This body of work began with an intention to transform the mundane. During this process of intuitively interacting/improvising with my surrounding environment, objects and people, I noticed the photographs had more to them than my intentional concept. They were perhaps fragments of my subconscious at the time of making each of them. This body of work represents the contents of my conscious and subconscious mind, connected through my intuition. It is a visual story of polarity, which perhaps resides within us all.

Confabulation, Ruth Lakhani

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

I create work that is an investigation of memory- individual memories from a single location over a span of time. Over time, these individual memories are layered on top of each other to become remembered as one. When the boundaries between the original and successive memories become unstable and unreliable false memories are produced.

My sculptures are non-literal representations of selected interior details from my memories of a place that I visited regularly throughout my life. This place that I am inspired by has undergone several different stages of repair, from when the house was first constructed up to the …

Examining The Role Of Active Student Engagement In High School Arts Courses, Athena Irene Nichols

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

A primary challenge to educators is the design and implementation of effective student engagement processes. High school students cannot be successful if they are frequently absent from school, as active engagement opportunities reinforce knowledge and help to keep students enthused in their learning. To address the challenges of frequent school absences, this study examined a gap in the literature--namely, the relationship between active engagement and arts courses as a motivator for students to remain in high school. For this study, active engagement was defined as a process in which the student's interests, efforts, and knowledge culminated in an application of …

Blarney In St. Louie: Performing Irishness At The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, 1904, Cassandra L. White

All Master's Theses

The dynamics of power between the privileged and those who must be subordinate to them was glaringly apparent at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. While natives from many countries were displayed in ethnographic villages, the Irish were represented in the Irish Industrial Exposition concession on the Pike. A group of ninety performers came from Ireland to show their skills this concession; among these were a troupe of actors from Dublin. The Dublin troupe was engaged to perform AE’s Deirdre, but left before they had been at the exposition for a month because they felt that the Irish …

Dispersal: A Multidisciplinary Investigation Of Plant Life, Alexandra E. Arzt

Theses and Dissertations

Using plants as a basis for exploring the interstices between the human and nonhuman, this thesis investigates ideas of awareness, intelligence, deep time, animism, and the fluctuating human perception of the agency of Nature. It outlines environmental art practices since the 1950s involving vegetal life. In addition, the paper provides a critical analysis of plant perception of Jakob von Uexküll’s work and theories of vital materialism and “critical plant studies” while noting recent studies in plant neurobiology. In my work, plants become active participants via their movement, seeding, and smell. This study takes the form of imitation, purposeful symbiosis, anthropomorphism, …

Avatar, Cyborg, Icevorg: Simulacra’S Scion, Guido E. Alvarez

Theses and Dissertations

I propose a theoretical framework that describes how avatars incorporate media as an inherent part of their nature and find a hosting body in cyborgs to navigate and spawn in media. I propose the birth of a new scion that combines avatar, medium and cyborg into a conceptual being that I call “ICEVORG.”

The ICEVORG expands beyond representation into the actual physical world by means of media transgression—more specifically, by the use of the Strange Loop also known as Metalepsis ICEVORG find an effective soil to thrive and interrogate our ideas of reality by means of iteration, expansion, fragmentation and …

Expanding Eco-Visualization: Sculpting Corn Production, Jennifer E. Figg

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation expands upon the definition of eco-visualization artwork. EV was originally defined in 2006 by Tiffany Holmes as a way to display the real time consumption statistics of key environmental resources for the goal of promoting ecological literacy. I assert that the final forms of EV artworks are not necessarily dependent on technology, and can differ in terms of media used, in that they can be sculptural, video-based, or static two-dimensional forms that communicate interpreted environmental information. There are two main categories of EV: one that is predominantly screen-based and another that employs a variety of modes of representation …

Into The Fray, Frances Pearce

Theses and Dissertations

My sculpture and prints are about dismemberment and the destruction caused by war. To address the high cost of war, I make works that present the threat of injury, amputation, and prosthetics. I use Classical Greek art history references to address contemporary political, military, and social issues. I include images such as Amazonian women, horses, and doves. These images are coupled with references to the damage caused by conflict. While my work concerns destruction, paradoxically, my process involves additive construction. I take a mixed media approach to both my sculptures and my prints, and use a wide range of materials …

A Perception Of Change, A Change Of Perception, Christopher D. White

Theses and Dissertations

Change is a constant reminder that permanence is the ultimate illusion. It is through the creation of hyper-realistic, ceramic sculpture that I explore the relationship between nature, humans, and the phenomenon of impermanence. I seek to expose the beauty that often results from decay while, at the same time, making my viewer question their own perception of the world around them. The juxtaposition of natural and man-made features in combination with the skewing of scale, proportion, and material, creates an altered perspective – forcing the viewer to look closer. By combining both human and natural elements within my work I …

Regarding The Porosity Of Borders, Lee M. Piechocki

Theses and Dissertations

An analysis of the surface of my paintings through Jean Baudrillard’s notion of seduction and the cool mechanism of the airbrush. I further investigate my work through the metaphor of the black mirror also known as a Claude Mirror and the connections between my work, Claude Lorrain’s landscape painting and divination through the use of reflective surfaces known as catopotromancy. Considering the notion of assemblage as outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Bruno Latour’s Action Network Theory I attempt to navigate the part/whole relationships found in painting, and in society.

Hands On Painting, Matthew Yaeger

Theses and Dissertations

How can we know something through how it is sensed? Making anthropomorphic, three-dimensional paintings through a set of basic, at-hand materials, I’m interested in how empathy, modesty, and doubt can mediate a tangible experience of an object. Challenging notions of perception, I want to create a heightened sense of awareness in which the intangible can be seen or felt.

Cute As A Button, Marta R. Finkelstein

Theses and Dissertations

Cute As A Button explores powerlessness, vulnerability, illness and addiction all wrapped up in tender buttons and a cute, cuddly creature. Using animation, sculpture, sound and an intimate space, I surround the viewer in a saccharine nightmare, one that references the dark underbelly of the cute and the sweet. The visual and aural elements are representative of the psychological and emotional states of powerlessness, which are overcome by the act of making and exploring a medium over which I can have complete control.

Double Zero, Anthony Earl Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis follows the trajectory of my artistic practice over the past two years, which has led to the installation of my thesis exhibition titled, Double Zero. I hope to position the work among its art and cultural terms by exploring how I have expanded my research concerning Situationist and Marxist theory as well as developed a broader photographic studio practice driven by material experimentation, play, and an investigation into how we live and interact with commodities through media.

Thank You For A Lovely Time, Kelley Mj Morrison

Theses and Dissertations

Stemming from my own fixation on trying to understand the actions, decisions and thought processes of those around me my work explores the difference between internal and external lives. I construct “brain spaces”; whether my own or someone else’s I strive to understand the decisions they have made and the stories we are a part of. I combine thoughts, feeling and sentiments which I have collected over my life to make objects that act as intermediaries, allowing others to imagine stepping into a mind other than their own. I attempt to bring the landscape of the mind into the physical …

Lullaby, Amber M. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

I have been investigating the way in which my mind has altered my memories, especially from childhood. The more a moment is recalled, the less precise it becomes. The most inaccurate memories from childhood are the ones I have fixated on. Bedrooms are spaces where dreaming, sleeping and reverie take place leading to even more fragmenting. The intimate space of a bedroom allows me to represent the personal distorted recollections. The bedroom furniture is missing parts, shifted in height and placement or combined together. By making doubles of furniture, a direct comparison can be made from the real piece to …

Postcession, Evan D. Pomerantz

Theses and Dissertations

This is a series of daily writings. Each day consists of a new topic and is closed at the end of the day. The ideas presented are philosophical, humorous, rambling, lamentations, incantations, doubt-ridden, aesthetic pep talks which combine into an affective representation of my studio practice’s becoming. There will be little congruency, some stories, and a lot of parallels because that is who I am.

Reconstructing A Science Fiction Autobiography, Jason R. Rood

Theses and Dissertations

This is a collection of essays revolving around concepts pertinent to my current visual arts practice, centering on a deconstruction of personal narrative mythologies. What is generated is a web of connection that spans Narrative Modes, Science Fiction, the use of Lines and Drawing, the Digital and Space and Time. Through this interweaving of topics, I am beginning the process of rebuilding the structure of a personal story for the future.

The Object Inbetween, Lucy L. Derickson

Theses and Dissertations

My mission is to bring attention to the unusual, undefined, and fluid connections we have to objects through various avenues of experience. Things, objects, and devices have shaped our culture, environment, and personal philosophies. We live, grow, learn, and mourn with objects. We worship, sympathize, and relate to objects. But what I am most interested in is a human tendency to retreat to objects, allowing them to mediate experiences of friendship and intimacy between people.

During my graduate studies, I have been evaluating my personal and professional connections with others in order to understand how technology such as smart phones …

Play Doh's Cave And The Pursuit Of The American Cream, Becky S. Sellinger

Theses and Dissertations

Take a minute. Imagine Wiley Coyote and Road Runner are in a domestic partnership. What would that look like? Close your eyes and Pause for 30 seconds. Don’t you see? Coyote never catches up. They keep running faster and faster. Everything in the house gets swept into the whirlwind they’ve created in their paths - the books, the shelves, the bed, and the desk lamp. Their circling movement creates a vacuum, which ultimately causes the entire structure to implode upon itself.

This text is an examination of my work and its relationship to the economic and the domestic. The metaphor …

Distance Moving Through Me: Working In Exile, Anne Beth Albagli

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis and accompanying exhibit, Untitled [Distance Moving Through Me: Giselle and Marco] explores contemporary issues of displacement and our relationship to the site of home. Through the trope of a pilgrimage in the desert, both virtual and in person, inspired by the eviction and imprisonment of my paternal family from Egypt in 1956, Distance Moving Through Me: Working in Exile asks how we can use our virtual experience and changing perspectives of the landscape to our advantage for a more empathic world.

Limelight & Indigestion, Joshua D. Thorud

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis chronicles the progression toward and creation of my thesis show, Limelight & Indigestion, as well as the cultural, technological and artistic influences and discussions that underpin the works therein. The show is an exploration of celebrity, mass media, and the nature of the desire for fame. I hope to situate my work through an investigation of topics such as Hollywood and the use of green screens and associated technology, our physical and ideological connection to cinema, the absurd in cinema history, and the complex nature of media digestion.

New Patriarchies: A Turbulence Of Source And Subject, Stephen Fuller

Theses and Dissertations

Experiencing a turbulence of source and subject in the variable inversions and supports of one source to another--the wreck of the U-352, Carpeaux’s Ugolino and his Sons, a movie poster for J.A. Bayona’s The Impossible, and Cassiopeia mythology--these four sources as sons, in sacrifice to and surviving by way of “daddy” documentation, are here refigured to reenact and critique the patriarchally recreational, monumental, cinematic, and mythological infrastructures supporting the sources of this work and thereby serving to critique the newer patriarchies to which these sources and their subjectifications here seek to cross consumptively dead end. Following three public …